He may be an enigma to some in the oil industry, but his giving speaks for itself

Updated 5:30 am, Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Oilman Lester Smith, with Coco, left, and Peaches, right, recently gave $15 million toward the creation of a cancer clinic.

Oilman Lester Smith, with Coco, left, and Peaches, right, recently gave $15 million toward the creation of a cancer clinic.

Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle

Meet Lester Smith, Houston's wildcatter of philanthropy

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Lester Smith had been making multimillion-dollar donations to Houston health institutions for the better part of a decade when he learned about the local community's tragic predicament.

The medical breakthroughs Smith's and other philanthropists' gifts were helping make possible often weren't benefitting poor people, doctors told him, because by the time they'd get an appointment at the Harris County Hospital District, their disease was too advanced to do much good.

"All I have to do is pick up the phone and I can get timely appointments for myself, (wife) Sue or friends," says Smith, president and founder of the Smith Energy Company. "But what can I do for all the people waiting to see a doctor at Ben Taub? What can one person do about their lack of access?"

This spring, Smith did something. He gave the hospital district $15 million, its biggest donation ever, toward a new cancer clinic that will cut wait times dramatically and feature equipment equal to that of the city's wealthiest hospitals. It was a rare charitable gift targeted at the poor.

It also provided one of the first real glimpses into Smith, a mainstay in Houston's philanthropic world but something of a mystery beyond it, even though he is one of the city's more colorful characters, an old-school wildcatter so devoted to cancer research he painted one of his wells pink.

Smith, 69, also wears an earring, speaks in aphorisms such as "anything worth doing is worth overdoing" and jokes with fellow Jews that his name was changed ... from Jones. He and Sue are two-time U.S. ballroom dance champions currently mulling an offer to appear on TV's Dancing with the Stars.

'A dying breed'

The pink well, whose proceeds fund grants to small organizations fighting breast cancer, is part of Smith's campaign against the disease, a campaign born of his own history. A two-time survivor, he beat bladder cancer and prostate cancer, all the while undergoing more than 40 operations.

During the ordeal, Smith built a business that's now in 17 states, mostly oil but also natural gas, coal, timber, iron ore and other minerals. The greatest number of wells, including the pink one, are in West Texas.

"He's a dying breed," said Fred Zeidman, former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Smith's cousin. "He's part of that generation not afraid to take risks, not afraid to put his money down and bet he's right that there's oil below."

Smith describes oil as "like perfume." He says he wanted to be a wildcatter since his seventh birthday, when he accompanied his father to the Boling Salt Dome near Wharton and the family rig struck oil for the first time. Smith says he was destined for the oil business the way children of actors follow in their footsteps.

Active in the Boy Scouts, which he credits with instilling in him the value of charity work, Smith says he nevertheless went on to pick up all his father's bad wildcatter habits — cursing, smoking, drinking, gambling. Betting on football games, he quickly lost the $500 he inherited when his father died at 46. He was 18.

Loves competition

Smith got into the oil business two months before the Arab oil embargo of 1973. He sold out at the top, 1982, "when too much money was chasing deals," before getting back in four years later. He's retired many times, but it never lasts and he says now he has no intention to ever stop working. He loves the competition too much.

Former Houston Mayor Bill White, a neighbor, says Smith had the vision to pursue oil where others had given up, making money in the Permian Basin after competitors thought it was picked over and in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico after buying a major oil company's assets its leaders thought were in decline.

Still, Smith is something of an enigma in the business. He's been successful enough to give Houston institutions tens of millions of dollars and his investors include the endowments of Harvard, Yale and Duke, but industry leaders in Texas contacted by the Houston Chronicle said they've never heard of him.

"Don't you love it?" asks Smith. "That's as great advantage in the oil business as it is in poker. It's a lot easier when you have something in play if no one knows who's there.

Mum on finances

Smith is similarly tight-lipped about his finances, deflecting questions about his company's annual profits and net worth. He is much more comfortable talking about doctors building him a new bladder out of his large intestine and the prostate cancer that had spread to his erectile nerves.

Smith is upbeat about it now, but he wasn't then. Nobody told him he was going to die, he says, but he was convinced that was his fate. "Everyone who has cancer thinks they're going to die," he says.

The treatment by Baylor College of Medicine doctors prompted Smith to give the Houston medical school $40 million over the past decade, $30 million for breast cancer and $10 million for the urology department.

But it's the hospital district gift that has gotten the most attention. District President David Lopez says it not only should transform cancer care at HCHD, but that it's put the district on the philanthropy map, opening up pathways it has never had and already resulting in a gift from a foundation.

"It's the most gratifying gift I've ever given," says Smith. "We were trying to do the right thing, but we had no idea the impact this would have."